Rats Jumping Ship

The CFO sees all the inside numbers and this guy obviously didn't like what he saw. This is not a good sign!

DEATH SPIRAL!!!

"Death can come swiftly to a market leader. By the time you have lost the positive-feedback cycle it's often too late to change what you've been doing, and all of the elements of a negative spiral come into play." - Bill Gates, "The Road Ahead", Chapter 3

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

NEW YORK -- Shares of PalmSource Inc. (PSRC) slid 8% Friday after the maker of operating systems for portable electronic devices said financial chief Al Wood resigned, only a month after Chairman Eric Banhamou stepped down.

In a news release late Thursday, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said Wood resigned effective Nov. 29 from the post he has occupied since Oct. 2002 to pursue other interests. He will be replaced by Ira Cook, the current vice president of finance, until the company finds Wood's permanent replacement.

In August, the provider of software for mobile information devices said Benhamou tendered his resignation as chairman, cutting further corporate ties with PalmSource's former sister company PalmOne Inc. (PLMO). PalmOne makes the handheld devices that run PalmSource's software.

PalmSource officials couldn't be reached for comment.

Fulcrum Global Partners analyst Jamie Friedman reiterated a buy rating on the stock after the announcement, but lowered his earnings and revenue estimates for fiscal 2005, and cut his price target to $23.

Based on his conversation with the company's chief executive, Dave Nagel, last night, Friedman wrote "there was nothing 'special' to motivate this resignation."

However, he added, "At this stage in its life cycle, PSRC requires management with telecom-specific relationships and business development skills that Wood was unable to provide," for which reason he thinks the company is targeting a new CFO with a telecom pedigree.

He also suggested that Wood's departure might have arisen from contentions related to unsuccessful licensee negotiations.

"We believe that one of PSRC's major licensees known to have exited the market was not bound by a top-up obligation, which we had been led to believe by the prior management," Friedman wrote in a research note Friday.

The analyst couldn't be reached for clarification or disclosures.

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

I really don't think that this is that big a deal. Wall Street almost always over-reacts. CFO at a small technology company, especially one in an emerging market like smart wireless devices, is usually not as criticial as a CFO at a more mature tech company. Case in point: Palmone's CFO, Judy Bruner, left P1 earlier this year, and P1 hasn't really missed a beat so far.

Now, all we need is some new licensees and some new Cobalt products!!!

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

"We believe that one of PSRC's major licensees known to have exited the market was not bound by a top-up obligation, which we had been led to believe by the prior management," Friedman wrote in a research note Friday."

Okay, forgive my ignorance of financial terms, but what is a "top-up obligation"? And I'm assuming the major licensee refers to Sony - so in what context is this comment made (i.e. someone in the know just translate the sentence as "Palm ____ ___ ____ since Sony was not actually bound by a top-up obligation as had been previously presented or insinuated." I could be totally wrong, but it jus sounds somewhat juicy. :-)

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

There is no set meaning for 'top-up obligation', though it is somtimes used to refer to a situation where X has an obligation to Y where Y's funds/assets/net assets fall below a certain level - eg, X is required to 'top up' Y's cash to a pre-agreed level. Anyway this is more a VC (or private equity) term rather than an item of industry-wide jargon. Any VCs out there care to offer an explanation?

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

Regarding top-up payment, most of Palmsource's licensees have an annual min. payment clause in their contracts with palmsource. For example, I am company ABC and I entered into a contract with palmsource to pay them 5% of my gross revenue from palm os devices sold or an annual min. payment of $5 million, whichever is greater. Assuming that I sold $80 million worth of palm os devices this year, I owe $80 million X 5% = $4 million, which is below the annual min. payment of $5 million. Hence, my top-up payment is $5-$4 = $1 million.

The major licensee the analyst referred to may be Sony, but it could also be Acer. Sony is actually still a licensee, since they sell Palm OS PDAs in Japan.

Still, a cool million $ in stock + a year's salary severance pay, etc is chump change for the average PalmSource and pa1mOne exec. David Nagel alone has cleared over 5 million in stock bonuses IN THE PAST 4 MONTHS! Take a look at how Palm's Apple Dumpling Gang have plundered the two "completely separate" companies in recent months. The links below are for MATURE audiences only. Please have all children leave the room prior to clicking on these links:

Looks like Woody done good! Congrats!

"(i) one year of annual base salary payment in the aggregate amount of $250,000.(ii) the acceleration of vesting of all shares underlying options to purchase common stock of PalmSource, Inc. held by you. ($??? Probably well over $1,000,000)(iii) the acceleration of vesting of 23,605 shares of restricted stock of PalmSource owned by you, which will be transferred by PalmSource’s transfer agent to your account in accordance herewith. (i.e. around another $500,000)(iv) the health, dental and vision benefits coverage for one year in accordance with the conditions set forth in the Severance Agreement (Woody's gotta stay healthy to enjoy all that loot!)

(B) the payment of 100% of the unpaid portion of the target level bonus under PalmSource FY2005 Bonus Plan in the aggregate amount of $100,000. (Why thank you. Does this mean PalmSource is meeting its performance targets? Dwindling licencees, PalmOS 6 dead on arrival, no licencees willing to touch PalmOS 6 with a 10 foot pole...)"

"The Company’s executive officers and members of the Human Resources Department shall be instructed to follow the Company’s standard practice with respect to the departing employees in providing only confirmations of your employment dates and title and that you departed to pursue other interests." (Thanks. I'm your fall guy, Mr. Nagel! May I have my check now, please?)

"you will refrain at any time from taking any actions or making any statements, written or oral, which would disparage or defame the Company’s goodwill or reputation, or the goodwill or reputation of any of the Company’s current or former directors, officers, or employees, or adversely affect the Company’s relationship(s) with any current or past customers, analysts, investors, rating agencies, media representatives, external consultants, or any other entity with whom they do business or intend to do business. You also agree that you will not act as a source (attributable or otherwise) with the media or any other person or entity regarding any information you have acquired, including Confidential Information, in connection with your employment with PalmSource." (i.e. NO YANKOWSKI JOKES!!!)

Fossil? Sony? Kyocera? GSL? QTech? (Yeah the market for PDAs is EXPLODING in India right now. Who needs food when you can buy a shiny new QTech PDA?) Aceeca? (The Meazura™ is the world's first Palm Powered™ device that is waterproof to IP67 standards. God bless Aceeca!) Yes, the future's looking pretty bright for PalmSource right now...

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

Interesting. It may also be worthwhile to compare this to the severence packages for the 4 heads of WinCE/WindozeMobile Division which M$ dismissed in the last 3 years (OK, I admit that one was 'promoted' sideways, but he's a dead man walking).

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

We can argue till the cows come home about executive compensation in the good ole U.S.A.. The fact is that Al Wood's severance package is nothing out of ordinary for a CFO.

People come and go all the time when it comes to jobs. It is clear that Dave and Al didn't get along, and they parted way. Is it a disaster that some on this forum would have you believe? Of course not.

RE: Rats Jumping Ship

Interesting. It may also be worthwhile to compare this to the severence packages for the 4 heads of WinCE/WindozeMobile Division which M$ dismissed in the last 3 years (OK, I admit that one was 'promoted' sideways, but he's a dead man walking).

Last time I checked, Microsoft was posting billions in profits, year after year. Palm, on the other hand has probably had a net 1 BILLION dollar loss over the past three years. Which one needs to worry about controlling exec compensation? Hint: It's not Microsoft.

Palm is cutting R+D and other expenses to the bone and using cheap components in an effort to eke out a couple bucks here and there. Then they turn around and blow $20 million a year on compensation + bonuses for their top few execs. Go figure. Now is not the time to be sucking every drop of blood from Palm. The leeches should at least have the decency to wait and see if the company can mount a recovery before they start parasitizing it again. No doubt the Regular Joes at Palm/one/source are impressed.

RE: Typo Ryan...

No good news at all

I definitely think that PalmSource (and Palm OS) is currently in a very bad trend, the worse one it has faced so far.

1) PalmOS 6.x (whatever x is) is a failure. Not supported by developers, nor by licensees. Does not work, does not show up and, mostly, useless.

2) Licensees are running away (as a consequence of previous point). See PalmOne: as soon as they can, they will run for PocketPC.

3) PalmSource has compromised with operators, who are like the devil: you can get power from them, but you have to sacrifice your soul.

4) Palm OS is no longer simple, elegant, efficient, nor different from PocketPC. Thanks to Sony pressure, it has become a crappy "multimedia" Win95-like operating system. Zen of Palm is dead.

5) PalmSource makes bad strategic choices. As time flows, it becomes evident that their recent decisions have been guided by some spirit of "Newton return" or "BeOS revenge". From a leader, they have switched to the behavior of a follower.

Well, you know, I am disappointed. Unless a miracle, I no longer see no future for them.

RE: No good news at all

RE: No good news at all

I definitely think that PalmSource (and Palm OS) is currently in a very bad trend, the worse one it has faced so far.

Nope. They were looking worse when they wrote off a few hundred million worth of goods a few years ago. At least Palm finally realized it needed to reinvent itself as a smartphone company.

PalmOS 6.x (whatever x is) is a failure. Not supported by developers, nor by licensees. Does not work, does not show up and, mostly, useless.

True. PalmSource tried to make PalmOS 6 too perfect and wasted too much time bringing it out. In the meantime, Sony left and the other licencees were forced to find ways to get PalmOS 5 to do what they needed. Now no one needs (or wants) PalmOS 6 - despite the fact that PalmOS 6 has the potential to be a fantastic OS for both PDAs and mini laptops. Will PalmOS 6 eventually be remembered as a Hudson or an Edsel?

2) Licensees are running away (as a consequence of previous point). See PalmOne: as soon as they can, they will run for PocketPC.

The only reason to go to PPC is for political reasons. PalmOS 6 (and even PalmOS 5) are much better solutions that PPC. Period.

3) PalmSource has compromised with operators, who are like the devil: you can get power from them, but you have to sacrifice your soul.

BS. PalmSource will need to obey the cell phone carriers if it wants to survive, but this makes almost zero impact on what the software can do. The only thing we'll see is some enhanced "security" for the carriers' sake.

4) Palm OS is no longer simple, elegant, efficient, nor different from PocketPC. Thanks to Sony pressure, it has become a crappy "multimedia" Win95-like operating system. Zen of Palm is dead.

BS. PalmOS is still very simple. The current problems stem from trying to force PalmOS 5 to do stuff it was never designed for, in addition to Palm making the dumba$$ move of specing NAND Flash when the OS and hardware can't handle it transparently.

5) PalmSource makes bad strategic choices. As time flows, it becomes evident that their recent decisions have been guided by some spirit of "Newton return" or "BeOS revenge". From a leader, they have switched to the behavior of a follower.

Partly true. PalmOS 6 is the ba$tard child of BeOS and it's obvious that the Be engineers didn't learn their lesson the first time around. The KISS principle should be tattooed onto their foreheads. Palm isn't a follower - they've just gone so far out ahead that they lost contact with those following them, so people are now starting to follow more conservative "leaders".

Well, you know, I am disappointed. Unless a miracle, I no longer see no future for them.

If PalmOS 6 was ported to mini laptops AND regular cell phones, Palm could have a great future. Palm is wrecking a tremendous opportunity to sell businesses a complete, stable PalmOS solution: Treos + mini laptops + regular cellphones, all with almost zero support costs necessary.

RE: No good news at all

>>> Nope. They were looking worse when they wrote off a few hundred million worth of goods a few years ago. At least Palm finally realized it needed to reinvent itself as a smartphone company.

You are talking about Palm, Inc. This is about PalmSource, Inc. Nothing to do with hardware.

>>> PalmOS 6 has the potential to be a fantastic OS for both PDAs and mini laptops.

I agree a lot. Or for some medium-term between PDAs and tablets (a PDA with a larger screen, or a small tablet, half the size of the current ones).

>>> The only reason to go to PPC is for political reasons. PalmOS 6 (and even PalmOS 5) are much better solutions that PPC. Period.

Maybe from the technical point of view, but less for the end-user. End-users are very sensitive to Windows and Office and, to some extent, to MB, MHz (or GHz), Mpixels. I went to my local tech gadgets store yesterday and could verify that once again. PPC is now to a point where its shortcomings are small enough to be acceptable by most uninitiated end-users.

>>> BS. PalmSource will need to obey the cell phone carriers if it wants to survive, but this makes almost zero impact on what the software can do. The only thing we'll see is some enhanced "security" for the carriers' sake.

You bet. They want to control everything. Installable apps? Sure! Provided that they can choose them, market them, check that they behave the way they like, etc. Smart features? Of course! Provided that they guide the end-user towards profitable traffic. An example, with Orange in Europe: when you take a picture using the camera on the Treo 600, the Send option directs you to MMS (which means $$$ for the operator) instead of e-mail with attachment (which is smarter, but almost no $ for the operator).

>>> BS. PalmOS is still very simple. The current problems stem from trying to force PalmOS 5 to do stuff it was never designed for, in addition to Palm making the dumba$$ move of specing NAND Flash when the OS and hardware can't handle it transparently.

Are you a developer? Palm OS is no longer simple. Lots of special cases, lots of device-dependent behaviours, lots of bugs presented as features, lots of shortcomings ("not yet fully implemented"). Of course, the standard UI is still quite simple and user-friendly (although more and more 3rd party apps break most rules to be more attractive at the price of clumsyness).

>>> Partly true. PalmOS 6 is the ba$tard child of BeOS and it's obvious that the Be engineers didn't learn their lesson the first time around. The KISS principle should be tattooed onto their foreheads.

Or at least should they focus on what is important for developers and end-users, not for their ego. ;-)

>>> Palm isn't a follower - they've just gone so far out ahead that they lost contact with those following them, so people are now starting to follow more conservative "leaders".

I disagree. They missed at least two points: 1) people buy Microsoft's proposition "a PDA is a PC in your pocket, so it must run Windows, handle Office docs, blah blah blah". 2) the PDA is being squeezed between smartphones and tablets. I do think that the PDA will finally vanish and be replaced by both families.

>>> If PalmOS 6 was ported to mini laptops AND regular cell phones, Palm could have a great future. Palm is wrecking a tremendous opportunity to sell businesses a complete, stable PalmOS solution: Treos + mini laptops + regular cellphones, all with almost zero support costs necessary.

Sorry, but I find this both utopic and pointless. The laptop market is monopolized by Windows and Office. Unless Linux manages to be a spoilsport, I don't see no way to change this. On the other hand, both mini-tablet and smartphone families are legitimate targets for Palm OS. However, there is no indication in the current trends that Palm OS is going to dominate there.

>>>>>> Let's campaign for open source Palm OS.>>> Don't be silly.

I am not. If Palm OS was the Linux of PDAs, I believe that things would be very different. And above all, I think that if PalmSource does not finally prove itself capable of pushing Palm OS to success, it would be a very smart move.

Palm screwed up

"The only reason to go to PPC is for political reasons. PalmOS 6 (and even PalmOS 5) are much better solutions that PPC. Period."

No, the reason would be technical. POS 5 is a bad platform for custom software development, starting with its poor file system support, memory management limitations, and multithreading limitations, and custom software development is where much of the corporate market is. POS 6 is proprietary and incompatible with anything else.

Palm screwed up big time, and they may well not be able to recover. Palm should have updated PalmOS to a POSIX-like multithreading OS half a dozen years ago: it would have cost them almost no development effort (they could have picked from dozens of commercial or free kernels). But greed and arrogance kept them from doing that: they wanted something proprietary.

RE: No good news at all

RE: No good news at all

>>> Nope. They were looking worse when they wrote off a few hundred million worth of goods a few years ago. At least Palm finally realized it needed to reinvent itself as a smartphone company.

You are talking about Palm, Inc. This is about PalmSource, Inc. Nothing to do with hardware.

Whatever you say...

>>> PalmOS 6 has the potential to be a fantastic OS for both PDAs and mini laptops.

I agree a lot. Or for some medium-term between PDAs and tablets (a PDA with a larger screen, or a small tablet, half the size of the current ones).

A slightly bigger (Sharp Zaurus sized) version of the CLIE UX50 with a better keyboard and a 5 inch OLED screen, running PalmOS 6 could have been a huge hit if Palm or Sony had the guts to sell it. Palm needed to boldly reinvent itself in different niches if it had any hope of surviving. Smartphones was the most obvious niche. Mini/micro laptops (previously labelled "PalmTops") was another niche they could easily have exploited if management wasn't asleep at the wheel. Tablets are a dead category.

>>> The only reason to go to PPC is for political reasons. PalmOS 6 (and even PalmOS 5) are much better solutions that PPC. Period.

Maybe from the technical point of view, but less for the end-user. End-users are very sensitive to Windows and Office and, to some extent, to MB, MHz (or GHz), Mpixels. I went to my local tech gadgets store yesterday and could verify that once again. PPC is now to a point where its shortcomings are small enough to be acceptable by most uninitiated end-users.

Palm already has everything it needs to compete with PPC. It all boils down to marketing. PalmOS and PPC both run on similar processors + other hardware. PalmOS ironically has much better options for integration with Microsoft Word/Excel than PPC! PalmOS has a better browser than PPC. PalmOS does PIM better than PPC. PalmOS has a wider variety of apps than PPC. PalmOS has a good selection of email apps available for both corporate and individual customers. Why isn't Palm using these advantages to get PalmOS entrenched in businesses? Microsoft is using the false perception that anything with the Microsoft name on it guarantees better compatibility with Microsoft Word/Excel/Outlook to quietly squash Palm's busness aspirations. Palm has done nothing to alter this perception and has no one to blame but itself.

>>> BS. PalmSource will need to obey the cell phone carriers if it wants to survive, but this makes almost zero impact on what the software can do. The only thing we'll see is some enhanced "security" for the carriers' sake.

You bet. They want to control everything. Installable apps? Sure! Provided that they can choose them, market them, check that they behave the way they like, etc. Smart features? Of course! Provided that they guide the end-user towards profitable traffic. An example, with Orange in Europe: when you take a picture using the camera on the Treo 600, the Send option directs you to MMS (which means $$$ for the operator) instead of e-mail with attachment (which is smarter, but almost no $ for the operator).

I don't see how this is a major issue. First of all, there's NO WAY there will be limitations on what apps can be installed. If they're PalmOS-compatible, they'll work. And with your photo example, of course carriers will try to get you to use more of their services - that's how they make money and that's why they're bothering to carry smartphones in the first place. (Just look at how much a typical contract costs with a regular phone vs. a smartphone. These numbers make carriers drool.) A simple workaround would be to send the JPEG using a separate email program. That wasn't hard, was it?

>>> BS. PalmOS is still very simple. The current problems stem from trying to force PalmOS 5 to do stuff it was never designed for, in addition to Palm making the dumba$$ move of specing NAND Flash when the OS and hardware can't handle it transparently.

Are you a developer? Palm OS is no longer simple. Lots of special cases, lots of device-dependent behaviours, lots of bugs presented as features, lots of shortcomings ("not yet fully implemented"). Of course, the standard UI is still quite simple and user-friendly (although more and more 3rd party apps break most rules to be more attractive at the price of clumsyness).

I am not a professional developer. But I do have a couple of widely-downloaded apps on the various Palm software sites if that matters. PalmOS remains simple TO THE USER, which is all that matters. Yes, behind the scenes there's a truly shocking amount of kludges, hacks, patches, Band Aids and duct tape being applied to PalmOS 5 in order to get it to do all the things expected of a modern PDA or smartphone. But PalmOS 6 was supposed to have been here by now and taken care of all of that. Too bad the BeBoppers fcuked up and tried to create the Perfect Code instead of concentrating on getting the framework of a simple, basic next generation OS out the door ASAP (i.e. in 2003) and then adding fancy features later. While in an ideal world you release a new OS only after you've finalized and extensively tested every component, PalmSource and the pie in the sky Be engineers forgot that they live in the Real World. Where delays can mean product death - no matter how good you think that product is/will be.

>>> Partly true. PalmOS 6 is the ba$tard child of BeOS and it's obvious that the Be engineers didn't learn their lesson the first time around. The KISS principle should be tattooed onto their foreheads.

Or at least should they focus on what is important for developers and end-users, not for their ego. ;-)

The Be engineeres are clueless about market realities. They were the wrong people for the job of quickly producing PalmOS 6.

>>> Palm isn't a follower - they've just gone so far out ahead that they lost contact with those following them, so people are now starting to follow more conservative "leaders".

I disagree. They missed at least two points: 1) people buy Microsoft's proposition "a PDA is a PC in your pocket, so it must run Windows, handle Office docs, blah blah blah". 2) the PDA is being squeezed between smartphones and tablets. I do think that the PDA will finally vanish and be replaced by both families.

As I mentioned before, Palm actually handles MS Office integration BETTER than PPC. This is a fact widely accepted by impartial observers within the industry. Palm has failed miserably in promoting their advantages over PPC. Tablets were an interesting idea that died a while ago. Outside a few narrow niches, they just don't make any sense, given their high price. PDAs just needed to reinvent themselves as mini laptops, MP3 + video players, wireless web browsers, etc. to adapt to the changing market. Sony was just starting to push PDA designs where they needed to go prior to their pullout. The UX50, TH55 and VZ90 hinted at the potential of the Palm platform. Palm's current offerings show a company that is completely bereft of ideas.

>>> If PalmOS 6 was ported to mini laptops AND regular cell phones, Palm could have a great future. Palm is wrecking a tremendous opportunity to sell businesses a complete, stable PalmOS solution: Treos + mini laptops + regular cellphones, all with almost zero support costs necessary.

Sorry, but I find this both utopic and pointless. The laptop market is monopolized by Windows and Office. Unless Linux manages to be a spoilsport, I don't see no way to change this. On the other hand, both mini-tablet and smartphone families are legitimate targets for Palm OS. However, there is no indication in the current trends that Palm OS is going to dominate there.

No, you're wrong. Ensuring survival in an already-nonprofitable, shrinking environment means creating new niches and pushing the design envelope. Sony started doing this and then got cold feet. Palm has no business trying to compete directly with Windows laptops, but they could have easily created a niche providing bulletproof, idiotproof, easy-to-support, instant on, inexpensive mini or micro laptops that can do 95% of the tasks that mobile professionals do. Imagine a Sharp Zaurus sized device with integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 5 inch OLED screen, SD and CompactFlash slots, PalmOS 6, Documents To Go, NetFront browser, Mobile TS or Mergic VPN, WiFile, Blackberry capabilities +/- integrated cell phone radio. It could sell for less than 1/3 the price of a business laptop and - more importantly - with the proper configuration, cost next to nothing to support. Zero threat for viruses, data safe + backed up regularly with encryption and additional Wi-Fi off-device storage of backups: these are the kind of advantages that an innovative PDA company would have marketed to businesses. Instead, we got the Palm "5". Good Lord!

>>>>>> Let's campaign for open source Palm OS.>>> Don't be silly.

I am not. If Palm OS was the Linux of PDAs, I believe that things would be very different. And above all, I think that if PalmSource does not finally prove itself capable of pushing Palm OS to success, it would be a very smart move.

Suuuuure. Give away their only source of income for free... Do you also work for free? Yes, Palm should spend three years, tens of millions of dollars and countless engineering hours working on PalmOS 6 only to turn and give it away to YOU? For free? I really don't understand the freeloader mentality that has plagued PalmOS from the beginning. What are you people smoking?

Should PalmOS 6 have been based on Linux?

"The only reason to go to PPC is for political reasons. PalmOS 6 (and even PalmOS 5) are much better solutions that PPC. Period."

No, the reason would be technical. POS 5 is a bad platform for custom software development, starting with its poor file system support, memory management limitations, and multithreading limitations, and custom software development is where much of the corporate market is. POS 6 is proprietary and incompatible with anything else.

Palm screwed up big time, and they may well not be able to recover. Palm should have updated PalmOS to a POSIX-like multithreading OS half a dozen years ago: it would have cost them almost no development effort (they could have picked from dozens of commercial or free kernels). But greed and arrogance kept them from doing that: they wanted something proprietary.

I have said repeatedly that Palm shoild have bitten the bullet and updated the OS several years ago. The ARM Linux route was one option. But the Be engineers acquired in the payout to Pépé Gassee had to be put to work, so UNIX flavors were too good for Palm. No, they needed to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. The problem is that now they have run out if time trying to reinvent the wheel.

-------------------------------------------------------------------Disappointed Palm User:"For PalmOS 6, I had expected that Palm would have been brave enough to think UNIX flavor + pretty GUI + PACE clone (the "emulator" I naively envisioned being folded into the Clean Sheet™ OS) running on modern 400MHz processors. Give 30 experienced engineers 1 year to bind all these elements together. I think it could have (and should have) been done."

PalmSource Dominatrix:Easy claims, for someone who is essentially posting anonymously. Tell me, what is your engineering background to be able to make such a statement? Have you thought about these things:

* What the heck do you mean by "UNIX flavor"? Do you know what that is? (Bonus question: do you know what it is about the ARM architecture that makes it very difficult to efficiently implement the traditional Unix process model?) Are you talking about licensing an existing kernel like Linux or FreeBSD? Sure, licensing this stuff makes sense... which is why we licensed STREAMS for our IO subsystem. The kernel itself is a very small part -- we actually have only a few engineers working on ours, not much more than what would be needed to do customization and integration if we had licensed it. Oh and think about this: Be already had a fully functional Unix-like protected memory kernel, one that had been in production use for many years. Cobalt did not ship with the BeOS kernel. Are you saying the Be engineers are so stupid that they just kind-of forgot they had this thing?

* What is this pretty UI? Are you talking about running X Windows? Maybe embedded KDE? What are the trade-offs of these? If you aren't talking about licensing something, how is this any different than what we did for Cobalt?

* PACE clone. Cobalt -has- PACE. That is what runs all of the existing applications. The main difference I can imagine between what is there and what you are thinking is that in Cobalt PACE (for the most part) doesn't take care of translating the old system calls into what is needed in the new system architecture. Instead, we implemented that part of the compatibility layer outside of PACE so that (a) ARM native applications could also use them (to ease porting of existing applications to ARM); and (b) for the initial release we could re-use and grow the existing APIs instead of introducing a completely new application framework. This decision was a significant measure in cutting down on the time to market: by making the traditional APIs available in ARM it was much easier for us to port all of our own existing apps, and we could avoid a -ton- of work in designing, documenting, and testing a full set of new APIs.

At this point, I think PalmSource is making a mistake. The time to decide which way to go was three years ago, and they went with Be instead of Linux. Trying to get a turnkey Linux solution at this late stage by buying the wankers at China MobileSoft Limited (CMS) smells of desperation. PalmSource needs to bite the bullet and dance with the girl they brought (to mix metaphors).

Why would any developers code for PalmOS 6??? ->

why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> why would any hardware manufacturers spec PalmOS 6? -> why would any developers code for PalmOS 6? -> and around and around we go in the negative feedback spiral... until PalmSource hits ROCK BOTTOM. Probably won't be long at this rate.

RE: No good news at all

Instead of replying yet again to all of this, I'll just quote directly from your own post:

"But the Be engineers acquired in the payout to Pépé Gassee had to be put to work, so UNIX flavors were too good for Palm. No, they needed to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. The problem is that now they have run out if time trying to reinvent the wheel."

And then my reply to the last time you made these claims, conveniently quoted in there:

"Be already had a fully functional Unix-like protected memory kernel, one that had been in production use for many years. Cobalt did not ship with the BeOS kernel. Are you saying the Be engineers are so stupid that they just kind-of forgot they had this thing?"

Which leaves me all kinds of confused about what exactly you are trying to say, but at this point it's clearly not worth getting in to.

RE: No good news at all

"At this point, I think PalmSource is making a mistake. The time to decide which way to go was three years ago, and they went with Be instead of Linux."

As has been continually pointed out, the kernel in Cobalt is NOT from BeOS. It was started at Palm well before the Be acquisition happened.

While we are still figuring out many of the details of this effort, it seems quite likely at this point that the vast majority of the technology in Cobalt that came from Be will continue to exist when the system is running on Linux.

"Trying to get a turnkey Linux solution at this late stage by buying the wankers at China MobileSoft Limited (CMS)"

Just out of curiosity, in the world you live in are the only good software engineers the ones who worked at Handera? Or might there be some others around somewhere?

"smells of desperation. PalmSource needs to bite the bullet and dance with the girl they brought (to mix metaphors)."

Fortunately, we do today have an existing product (Cobalt) that we are aggressively working with licensees to get shipped on devices. Having a longer-term plan to make the system available on another kernel doesn't stop that product from existing. We also expect the existing Cobalt SDK to exist exactly as-is on a Linux flavor of the system, so worst case for application developers is a need to recompile their code. That is actually a much easier transition than going from 68k to the existing Protein APIs. (And clearly ideally we'd like them to work as-is without a recompile at all, but we don't know enough at this point to make that kind of promise.)

Why do you think this would have much of an impact on licensees who are currently planning on using Cobalt? All of the existing applications will still work as well as they did before the announcement, it doesn't make it any harder for them to get Cobalt running on their device, or otherwise impact what they need to do. The only thing I think they would care much about is that probably at some point in the future devices they build will be running the Linux flavor of PalmOS. However, I think most likely this will be a much easier transition than going to Cobalt since the main thing changes is the kernel: so the main impact will probably be having to write new drivers, but they tend to have to write new drivers for each device, anyway.

At any rate, this annnouncement is clearly something that PalmSource needs to work closely with licensees about (which we have been) to make sure any concerns they have are addressed. But I really can't see it being any kind of a show-stopper.

--DiannePalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Ms. Dianne "hackbod" Hackborn: Go down swinging.

Instead of replying yet again to all of this, I'll just quote directly from your own post:

"But the Be engineers acquired in the payout to Pépé Gassee had to be put to work, so UNIX flavors were too good for Palm. No, they needed to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. The problem is that now they have run out if time trying to reinvent the wheel."

And then my reply to the last time you made these claims, conveniently quoted in there:

"Be already had a fully functional Unix-like protected memory kernel, one that had been in production use for many years. Cobalt did not ship with the BeOS kernel. Are you saying the Be engineers are so stupid that they just kind-of forgot they had this thing?"

Which leaves me all kinds of confused about what exactly you are trying to say, but at this point it's clearly not worth getting in to.

Hi right back at you, DK. I think my points and overall position are (as usual) crystal clear. I've said repeatedly that THREE TEARS AGO Palm should have migrated to an ARMLinux (or other UNIX kernel) architecture. They didn't because of a number of reasons, including the presence of several dozen ex-Be engineers from the Be/Gassee rescue. Whatever. Major mistake, but now that's spilt milk. At this point, PalmSource should be throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible. An OS so good that licencees would be foolish to ignore it.

The millions of dollars in bonuses that David Nagel and his cronies keep sucking from PalmSource every month should have been used to hire extra engineers and licence best of breed applications. CES Dewar coding a Datebook/Calendar replacement makes a lot more sense that what you've got now. People like (ex-Palm employee) Gavin Maxwell, Mike McCollister, Aaron Ardiri, the Ultrasoft guy (David?), imazeki-san, Mike Waldron and the old HandEra engineers, etc could have advanced the ROM development faster in three months than Be did in three years.

At this point, PalmSource has made its Bed and needs to lie in it. It needs to go down with the Be ship.

RE: No good news at all

"They didn't because of a number of reasons, including the presence of several dozen ex-Be engineers from the Be/Gassee rescue."

How many times do I have to repeat myself? COBALT DOES NOT USE THE BEOS KERNEL. If there was a fight from the Be engineers over the kernel to use, THEY LOST.

Even if you take the assumption that every Be engineer was completely adamant that the only kernel we could use for Cobalt was BeOS and the Be engineers won, that would only make things easier today to move over to Linux. The BeOS kernel was a Unix-like kernel, -much- more similar to Unix than the kernel we have in Cobalt today.

"PalmSource should be throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible."

We are. We have been for the last couple years. If you read my explanation in another thread on what exactly a kernel is, you will see that this change doesn't throw away -nearly- as much work as you seem to think. For example, my team does the code from the main inter-process communication mechanism used in the system all the way up to the Window and Form Manager APIs. The -only- impact it has on us is that we need to re-do that basic IPC code... and most likely we can just resurrect the version of it we did on BeOS 3 years ago because of the similarities between BeOS and Linux.

"People like ... could have advanced the ROM development faster in three months than Be did in three years."

You keep making this statement as if it is fact. We've already gone through your more detailed explanation of how you think this could be done by plugging together Linux, PACE, etc., and I've pointed out how much work you are missing. (Btw, your description of how you think this can be done is -exactly- the same kind of "take these boxes and put them together" thinking that engineers hate to hear from management because they make what will be years of effort look like a trivial amount of work.)

In fact the vast majority of work we did over the two years of Cobalt 6.0 development was to get the PalmOS system architecture running on a modern protected memory kernel -- the exact same work we need to do to get it running on Linux as well. Switching to Linux doesn't change the need for this. It's unfortunate most of that work isn't directly visible to users, but it is there and necessary. If you want an analogy, the first version of Cobalt was very much like Windows NT 3.1, which looked almost identical to Windows 3.1, but was completely different under the hood. This work was a necessary first step to get a modern platform on which we can do the real innovative work that -is- directly visible to users.

Dianne... Dianne... Dianne. I feel your pain. And your shame

How many times do I have to repeat myself? COBALT DOES NOT USE THE BEOS KERNEL. If there was a fight from the Be engineers over the kernel to use, THEY LOST.

Ummmmm... DK, I know Cobalt doesn't use the BeOS kernel. I never claimed it did. My understanding is that several of the ex-Be engineers have been involved in the Cobalt kernel development. If now you're claiming that the Holy Be engineers were in fact repulsed by the Krude Palm Kodemonkey Kernel they were shown on arrival at Palm, but reluctantly agreed to work on it, (or better yet, all refused to touch that steaming pile of feces) then well... whatever.

"PalmSource should be throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible."

We are. We have been for the last couple years. If you read my explanation in another thread on what exactly a kernel is, you will see that this change doesn't throw away -nearly- as much work as you seem to think. For example, my team does the code from the main inter-process communication mechanism used in the system all the way up to the Window and Form Manager APIs. The -only- impact it has on us is that we need to re-do that basic IPC code... and most likely we can just resurrect the version of it we did on BeOS 3 years ago because of the similarities between BeOS and Linux.

No, I don't think so. If you really were "throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible" you would have outsourced a significant part of the development and a stable PalmOS 6 would have been on SHIPPING devices in early 2004. What the he11 is George thinking? Did he expect your team to singlehandedly address every aspect of the OS development within 18 months? Wow. Once again, that good old Be arrogance has popped up to bite you in the a$$. You people will never learn.

If you read my explanation in another thread on what exactly a kernel is, you will see that this change doesn't throw away -nearly- as much work as you seem to think. For example, my team does the code from the main inter-process communication mechanism used in the system all the way up to the Window and Form Manager APIs. The -only- impact it has on us is that we need to re-do that basic IPC code... and most likely we can just resurrect the version of it we did on BeOS 3 years ago because of the similarities between BeOS and Linux.

You are grossly, shamelessly understating the amount of work that would/will be necessary to successfully migrate from PalmOS6 to PalmLinux. I realize you have been directed to make this migration appear as trivial as a recompile, but that's a specious suggestion. Why don't you just cut through the BS and answer this SIMPLE question: If development of PalmLinux was to start January 1, 2005, how long would it take before a stable, device-ready (as opposed to BS like the December, 2003 buggy, rush job "proof of concept" Cobalt 6.0) version of PalmLinux to be available? 6 months? 12 months? 18 months? 24 months? 36 months? 48 months? Enough spin, DK. Just the facts please, Ma'am.

"People like ... could have advanced the ROM development faster in three months than Be did in three years."

You keep making this statement as if it is fact. We've already gone through your more detailed explanation of how you think this could be done by plugging together Linux, PACE, etc., and I've pointed out how much work you are missing. (Btw, your description of how you think this can be done is -exactly- the same kind of "take these boxes and put them together" thinking that engineers hate to hear from management because they make what will be years of effort look like a trivial amount of work.)

In fact the vast majority of work we did over the two years of Cobalt 6.0 development was to get the PalmOS system architecture running on a modern protected memory kernel -- the exact same work we need to do to get it running on Linux as well. Switching to Linux doesn't change the need for this. It's unfortunate most of that work isn't directly visible to users, but it is there and necessary. If you want an analogy, the first version of Cobalt was very much like Windows NT 3.1, which looked almost identical to Windows 3.1, but was completely different under the hood. This work was a necessary first step to get a modern platform on which we can do the real innovative work that -is- directly visible to users.

Unfortunately, it is true that you should have outsourced much of the work that was done. But as BeBoppers tend to do, you can't see that non-Be engineers may know a lot more than you do, or that it's often not a good idea to try and reinvent the wheel. Or to do EVERYTHING immediately. I forsee a LOT of problems with personalities like you collaborating with your Chinese saviours. Plan B, from China has been enacted, and that's gotta hurt your Big Be egos. In a previous post a couple months ago I listed a simple outline of how PalmOS 6 should have been integrated with a no nonsense Unix flavor. You tried to shoot this down with a snotty response, only to have it blow up in your face now that your bosses obviously agreee that I was right all along. So now you're complaining because I didn't include a 30 page manifesto on how to code every aspect of PalmLinux? Sheesh. I've never claimed this is a trivial undertaking - just the opposite in fact. I've said before that most people won't appreciate the (invisible) work that went into PalmOS 6 and are probably underwhelmed with Cobalt primarily because the UI isn't much different from PalmOS 1. Tough T|Ts (Tungsten|Ts) - who's fault was it that you didn't have time to code a fancy new GUI in time to include in PalmOS 6.0? But keep swinging, DK. Keep flailing. Keep trying to shoot the messenger.

Your posts are sounding as defensive and haughty as ever. Try to remember this is the Internet - you have NO idea who you're talking to or how much they may know about the subject at hand.

Dianne... Dianne... Dianne. I feel your pain. And your shame

How many times do I have to repeat myself? COBALT DOES NOT USE THE BEOS KERNEL. If there was a fight from the Be engineers over the kernel to use, THEY LOST.

Ummmmm... DK, I know Cobalt doesn't use the BeOS kernel. I never claimed it did. My understanding is that several of the ex-Be engineers have been involved in the Cobalt kernel development. If now you're claiming that the Holy Be engineers were in fact repulsed by the Krude Palm Kodemonkey Kernel they were shown on arrival at Palm, but reluctantly agreed to work on it, (or better yet, all refused to touch that steaming pile of feces) then well... whatever.

"PalmSource should be throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible."

We are. We have been for the last couple years. If you read my explanation in another thread on what exactly a kernel is, you will see that this change doesn't throw away -nearly- as much work as you seem to think. For example, my team does the code from the main inter-process communication mechanism used in the system all the way up to the Window and Form Manager APIs. The -only- impact it has on us is that we need to re-do that basic IPC code... and most likely we can just resurrect the version of it we did on BeOS 3 years ago because of the similarities between BeOS and Linux.

No, I don't think so. If you really were "throwing EVERY conceivable resource behind Cobalt, working overtime in an effort to make it the most perfect OS possible" you would have outsourced a significant part of the development and a stable PalmOS 6 would have been on SHIPPING devices in early 2004. What the he11 is George thinking? Did he expect your team to singlehandedly address every aspect of the OS development within 18 months? Wow. Once again, that good old Be arrogance has popped up to bite you in the a$$. You people will never learn.

If you read my explanation in another thread on what exactly a kernel is, you will see that this change doesn't throw away -nearly- as much work as you seem to think. For example, my team does the code from the main inter-process communication mechanism used in the system all the way up to the Window and Form Manager APIs. The -only- impact it has on us is that we need to re-do that basic IPC code... and most likely we can just resurrect the version of it we did on BeOS 3 years ago because of the similarities between BeOS and Linux.

You are grossly, shamelessly understating the amount of work that would/will be necessary to successfully migrate from PalmOS6 to PalmLinux. I realize you have been directed to make this migration appear as trivial as a recompile, but that's a specious suggestion. Why don't you just cut through the BS and answer this SIMPLE question: If development of PalmLinux was to start January 1, 2005, how long would it take before a stable, device-ready (as opposed to BS like the December, 2003 buggy, rush job "proof of concept" Cobalt 6.0) version of PalmLinux to be available? 6 months? 12 months? 18 months? 24 months? 36 months? 48 months? Enough spin, DK. Just the facts please, Ma'am.

"People like ... could have advanced the ROM development faster in three months than Be did in three years."

You keep making this statement as if it is fact. We've already gone through your more detailed explanation of how you think this could be done by plugging together Linux, PACE, etc., and I've pointed out how much work you are missing. (Btw, your description of how you think this can be done is -exactly- the same kind of "take these boxes and put them together" thinking that engineers hate to hear from management because they make what will be years of effort look like a trivial amount of work.)

In fact the vast majority of work we did over the two years of Cobalt 6.0 development was to get the PalmOS system architecture running on a modern protected memory kernel -- the exact same work we need to do to get it running on Linux as well. Switching to Linux doesn't change the need for this. It's unfortunate most of that work isn't directly visible to users, but it is there and necessary. If you want an analogy, the first version of Cobalt was very much like Windows NT 3.1, which looked almost identical to Windows 3.1, but was completely different under the hood. This work was a necessary first step to get a modern platform on which we can do the real innovative work that -is- directly visible to users.

Unfortunately, it is true that you should have outsourced much of the work that was done. But as BeBoppers tend to do, you can't see that non-Be engineers may know a lot more than you do, or that it's often not a good idea to try and reinvent the wheel. Or to do EVERYTHING immediately. I forsee a LOT of problems with personalities like you collaborating with your Chinese saviours. Plan B, from China has been enacted, and that's gotta hurt your Big Be egos. In a previous post a couple months ago I listed a simple outline of how PalmOS 6 should have been integrated with a no nonsense Unix flavor. You tried to shoot this down with a snotty response, only to have it blow up in your face now that your bosses obviously agreee that I was right all along. So now you're complaining because I didn't include a 30 page manifesto on how to code every aspect of PalmLinux? Sheesh. I've never claimed this is a trivial undertaking - just the opposite in fact. I've said before that most people won't appreciate the (invisible) work that went into PalmOS 6 and are probably underwhelmed with Cobalt primarily because the UI isn't much different from PalmOS 1. Tough T|Ts (Tungsten|Ts) - who's fault was it that you didn't have time to code a fancy new GUI in time to include in PalmOS 6.0? But keep swinging, DK. Keep flailing. Keep trying to shoot the messenger.

Your posts are sounding as defensive and haughty as ever. Try to remember this is the Internet - you have NO idea who you're talking to or how much they may know about the subject at hand.

Secret PalmSource plans revealed!

While we are still figuring out many of the details of this effort, it seems quite likely at this point that the vast majority of the technology in Cobalt that came from Be will continue to exist when the system is running on Linux.

Sounds like this all wasn't very well planned. Like you all are making it up as you go. I don't think this migration to PalmLinux will be a smooth process now that PalmSource has suddenly pulled the plug on Cobalt.

"Trying to get a turnkey Linux solution at this late stage by buying the wankers at China MobileSoft Limited (CMS)"

Just out of curiosity, in the world you live in are the only good software engineers the ones who worked at Handera? Or might there be some others around somewhere?

The proof is in the pudding, DK. I've got a number of TRGpros and some HandEra 330s. Both models have OSes that were several years ahead of their time. Until you can show me Cobalt running on a real device with the OS showing the kind of quantum leap forward that TRG/HandEra's OSes showed, I'd suggest you... Be quiet. Palm has shown us repeatedly over the past 4 years that its software engineers are incompetent. You work there, so I won't bore you with examples. No doubt, you feel that's changed since the Holy Be engineers were added. I'll reserve judgement until I can actually find a shipping device that has non-buggy code. By the way, who was responsible for the Tungsten 5 OS? Or the Data Manager patch? Or the Tungsten C "Russian Roulette™" patch? Just wondering.

"smells of desperation. PalmSource needs to bite the bullet and dance with the girl they brought (to mix metaphors)."

Fortunately, we do today have an existing product (Cobalt) that we are aggressively working with licensees to get shipped on devices. Having a longer-term plan to make the system available on another kernel doesn't stop that product from existing. We also expect the existing Cobalt SDK to exist exactly as-is on a Linux flavor of the system, so worst case for application developers is a need to recompile their code. That is actually a much easier transition than going from 68k to the existing Protein APIs. (And clearly ideally we'd like them to work as-is without a recompile at all, but we don't know enough at this point to make that kind of promise.)

"(Cobalt) that we are aggressively working with licensees to get shipped on devices". Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha. That was funny 6 months ago. Now it's just plain sad.

Having a product existing doesn't stop licencees from ignoring it.

Until PalmLinux is actually coded and tested, what you hope and what you want are both meaningless. We'll know (in 2007?) exactly what's involved in migrating from Cobalt to PalmLinux. Until then, it's all talk.

Why do you think this would have much of an impact on licensees who are currently planning on using Cobalt? All of the existing applications will still work as well as they did before the announcement, it doesn't make it any harder for them to get Cobalt running on their device, or otherwise impact what they need to do. The only thing I think they would care much about is that probably at some point in the future devices they build will be running the Linux flavor of PalmOS. However, I think most likely this will be a much easier transition than going to Cobalt since the main thing changes is the kernel: so the main impact will probably be having to write new drivers, but they tend to have to write new drivers for each device, anyway.

At any rate, this annnouncement is clearly something that PalmSource needs to work closely with licensees about (which we have been) to make sure any concerns they have are addressed. But I really can't see it being any kind of a show-stopper.

--DiannePalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Do you really expect anyone here believes ANY licencees are planning to release a PalmOS 6 device any time soon? Good Lord!

RE:

RE: "Other interests"

Woody is a straight up kinda guy. Nagel is just blaming him to divert attention from the REAL problems PalmSource has:

- No real world OS development- No licencees currently using PalmOS 6- Most major licencees not interested in PalmOS 6- Several lost licencees- Sony allowed to dump PalmOS without completing long term contract, eliminating almost 20 % of PalmSource's revenues- No major new licence prospects

Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

So Palm has offered up Al Wood as a sacrificial lamb. So what? It's not his fault that the company keeps failing to execute.

Where are the Cobalt Palms? One year after the OS was officially released and we still have NOTHING. Very fishy. Besides Palm employees like Michael Mace and Dianne Hackborn, even longstanding Palm Apologists are now too embarassed to make excuses these days. When people that have been huge Palm boosters for the past six or seven years start switching to PPC, I think it shows Palm there's a big problem brewing.

And if Palm thinks the Treo 650 by itself is enough to carry the company out of a sea of red ink, they're seriously delusional. As soon as Microsoft gets their phone interface working properly and leverages an "all Windows, all the time" environment to businesses, you can kiss Palm's smartphone pipe dreams goodbye. Had Palm released a small, cheap phone (like the Sony Ericsson T610 or T630) running PalmOS in 2004, they might have got their installed user base to the critical mass needed to be taken seriously as a major player. Instead, they just have an overpriced, mildly refreshed one trick pony that will probably get its a$$ kicked once cheaper competitors start to arrive in 2005.

Makes me wonder if someone like David Nagel is secretly working for Microsoft... Way to go Palm.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

I too am worried about Palm. They just seem to be slipping further and further out of touch with the reality of the market place, with what consumers not only what but also need. The lack of Cobalt devices is inexcusable. At this rate, OS 7 (hmm...maybe Palm Limestone? Palm Quartz? Palm Diamond? I dunno, not a fan of that whole naming scheme anyway)- anyway, Os7 will be ready or close to being ready by the time anyone comes out with 6 devices (assuming anything ever gets developed past 6.x - most companies usually already have at least a basic idea of what the followup OS will feature once the previous one is already up to the first revision...but then again, apart from Apple and the various attempts at OS 8/Copland/etc, I can't recall this happening). I pretty much have made the switch fully to the dark side. The Palm OS certainly is simpler and faster - but not so drastically so that I can't stand using PPC, but noticeable. I just setup a Treo 650 for one of our directors, and yes, it's a nice device - but clearly NOT the PDA that I still want. And I finally got to play with a T5 the other day and - though many may be shocked - I actually have to admit that I liked it. The problem? It should have been available 1-2 years ago. I can't remember how many times we all begged for a tablet device (no slider) with 320x480...of course the Sony th55 was the first to get it right (and actually the only one since the TH55 was the only Palm Hi Res device to have built in WiFi and BT - but even that was only available in Europe!!!!). I just feel like some evil force saw what Palm device would have kept the platform in favor in the eyes of the fanatics like us, and did everything it could to stop that device from ever being released in the US. Oddly enough, the T5 copies some elements from the PPC - the first time I've seen someone else play MS' own game! :-) (for the curious - little things like tap and hold - no feedback like PPC, but works on things like the input panel to select between the input options (did the T3 do that? I don't remember ever trying it?), similar to being able to switch between the 4 or 5 options on a PPC. And tap and hold the Home icon - what is that, a favorites/recently launched menu? Yep, kind of like a PPC start menu, though of course I like Palm's execution better. There's all the noise about PalmOne being rumored to be working on a PPC phone for Dell (if they go with the SMartphone OS it will be pointless; going with PPC Phone Edition 2003 would actually mean a serious contender against the Treo, especially if it includes BT and WiFi!) - but it would be great if Palm SOurce actually debuted OS 6 on PPC Hardware (yes, I know I'm not the first to mention that). Since HP prematurely "retired" the most excellent iPAQ 4150 design, PalmSOurce could write a version of 6.x to work on that platform (assuming the rights have reverted back to HTC for the 4150 design), include WiFi and BT, removeable battery, and include either 320x480 or VGA screen in the same footprint - and Palm would once again have a true winner. ANd the best irony of all would be that once again Palm would be the smallest physical device, and the even greater irony would be that it came on a former Pocket PC hardware design that HP so foolishly scrapped for the dull and boring "box" design of the current iPAQ line. Oh well, we can all dream...because the reality of the Palm sitch is too much like a nightmare. Either they have thrown int he towel, or have given up and are prepared to - there just doesn't seemto be any fight left in them for the PDA area. And as cool as the Treo 650 is, I would NEVER be able to use it as my primary PDA. I know some people do and love it, and as a smartphone I sincerely think it rules - but for a PDA, there's just no way this baby can compete. There's still lots of life left in PDA's - and Palm really needs to see that and deliver the kick a$$ device they should have...come on Palm, surprise us all. Give everyone who defends you are real reason to. And finally, give us a PDA to use for those of us who still love and want and need a PDA, and are happy to keep a phone separate (tho talking w/ BT).

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

Since HP prematurely "retired" the most excellent iPAQ 4150 design, PalmSOurce could write a version of 6.x to work on that platform (assuming the rights have reverted back to HTC for the 4150 design), include WiFi and BT, removeable battery, and include either 320x480 or VGA screen in the same footprint - and Palm would once again have a true winner.

Isn't it funny to see Palm waste all this time slowly bringing out buggy new designs when tried and true parts are already out there? Drop PalmOS 5.2 into the 4150 + add a 320 x 480 screen and you have an instant contender. No development needed. Why is it that the year old TH55 is probably the last good PalmOS PDA that will ever be produced? Pathetic.

And while they're at it, maybe Palm could get off their lazy a$$es and license a few apps like BackupMan, McPhling, TealLock, McFile and Vindigo so Palms are a LOT safer/more useful out of the box. This isn't rocket science.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

I'd rather Palm keep their hands off the better of those applications. It seems every app that they've bought they've wrecked, and/or made unavailable or unupdated long enough for it to be replaced by better apps (remember Multimail?).

It would be nice if the licencees would just include plenty of internal memory, flashable ROM (with the ability to load apps of our own choice into them), and all those questionable apps like realplayer, etc. on an optional CD. What gets me is not that applications aren't included with the devices sold, it's that the devices sold at premium dollar don't support much of what I want to do with them. Such as the Treo 650 with a ridiculously small 32MB chip and lousy memory management. Palmsource and Palm should remerge, get their act together on what they are doing, and output some very "zenny" devices with a little thought into them, rather than the "zany" eye toys that seem to have been spec'd out for performance with the cache of Palmgear website circa 1999. Hey guys - there have been a few more applications developed since then - and we'd really like to be able to run them on our $400-700 Palm devices....

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

TVoR, to add to the "list of parts already out there" add the innards/specs of the T3 to the m5xx formfactor. This is what the market has been begging--nay, SCREAMING for since '02: 320*480, BT + wi-fi in a future revision, decent battery life, 128mb or more or good ol' DRAM, good hardware buttons, solid stylus and a metal housing. That's still more PDA than 95% of the market needs and as long as it's up to par quality-wise (I mean build quality AND OS rev) it'd sell in a relative bunches. The T5 is an overpriced joke in every way imaginable other than the abandonment of the slider.

Palm Inc. and Ideo hit the nail on the head and then knocked it one of the park with the original Palm V design. That and the subsequently tweaked m5xx remain the paradigm of handheld design and will likely never be surpassed in the forseeable future. Look at any other piece of consumer electronics approaching its 6th year--short of the original Startac, I challenge you to find as timeless of a design as the Vs & m500s.

Three Treos at various price levels, the Palm V '05 as I described above, and two cheap Zires would get P1 back on their collective feet. A pity it won't happen. Wouldn't it be nice if IBM jettisons their PC division to the Chinese and picks up the remnants of P1 and relaunches the WorkPad line? Stranger things have happened...

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

hklife, I'm with you, except I think that p1 should build two versions of the dream 2005 Palm V you described - there should be a "lite" version WITHOUT those useless BT & WiFi radios and only say 32M of memory. Also a decent plastic case is fine (and it helps keeps the weight down). If they can get all that into a unit which is thinner and lighter than the old m500, that would be perfect.

Palm V '05

>>> Palm Inc. and Ideo hit the nail on the head and then knocked it one of the park with the original Palm V design. That and the subsequently tweaked m5xx remain the paradigm of handheld design and will likely never be surpassed in the forseeable future. Look at any other piece of consumer electronics approaching its 6th year--short of the original Startac, I challenge you to find as timeless of a design as the Vs & m500s.

I definitely agree with you.

This would be a very, very nice idea. As Michael Mace explains at each PalmSource DevCon, most end-users don't install tons of apps on their machine. Most of them use the PIM + a couple of additional apps. Very simple use. Very basic needs. This is the Zen of Palm.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????joad @ 12/4/2004 8:22:23 PM

I'd rather Palm keep their hands off the better of those applications. It seems every app that they've bought they've wrecked, and/or made unavailable or unupdated long enough for it to be replaced by better apps (remember Multimail?).

It would be nice if the licencees would just include plenty of internal memory, flashable ROM (with the ability to load apps of our own choice into them), and all those questionable apps like realplayer, etc. on an optional CD. What gets me is not that applications aren't included with the devices sold, it's that the devices sold at premium dollar don't support much of what I want to do with them. Such as the Treo 650 with a ridiculously small 32MB chip and lousy memory management. Palmsource and Palm should remerge, get their act together on what they are doing, and output some very "zenny" devices with a little thought into them, rather than the "zany" eye toys that seem to have been spec'd out for performance with the cache of Palmgear website circa 1999. Hey guys - there have been a few more applications developed since then - and we'd really like to be able to run them on our $400-700 Palm devices....

As someone who watched Palm slowly strangle my then-favorite email app (MultiMail) several years ago, I understand your concerns. I FEEL your pain. We should start a Victims of Palm support group. ;-) What I'm suggesting is that Palm license the apps rather than buy them outright. Palm has shown their code monkeys are a bunch of hopeless amateurs, so it would be best to leave app development to the likes of CES Dewar, Mike McCollister, Will Lau, the TealPoint group, Mike Waldron, Imazeki-san, Aaron Ardiri, Gavin Maxwell, etc. These are people that care about quality and don't let things slide. Licencing Documents To Go was a good first step. How about adding Ultrasoft Money, Datebk5, BackupMan, etc? Give users value for their money.

I agree with you regarding the memory issue. At current prices, there is absolutely NO excuse for Palm to be offering less than 128 MB of regular RAM on PDAs. 16 - 32 MB of (user-accessible) Flash RAM would also be nice, but is much less important.

And yes, the Palm -> pa1mOne/PalmSource "split" was a total joke. PalmSource seems to be careening towards bankruptcy just one year after the split. And STILL complete silence on the Cobalt front. PalmSource should be embarassed. A lot of us predicted Cobalt would be a total flop because its oft-delayed development. Now that Sony's gone, who the he11 does PalmSource think will step up and use Cobalt? TapWave? Get serious - they already have the best customized version of PalmOS 5 on the market. Garmin? Nope. Samsung? Haven't released a REAL Palm device in around 25 - 30 years. pa1mOne? After seeing them butcher the Tungsten "5" and the Treo 650, I sure hope they aren't dumb enough to put a buggy new OS on a flagship product. That would be the last step needed to drive ALL remaining PalmOS supporters to PPC. Looks like Cobalt might show up first on an Asian-market smartphone from a secon-tier, obscure licensee. And let me guess: pa1mOne will soon step in and "buy" back PalmSource before Summer, 2005? What a sham.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????hkklife @ 12/4/2004 9:45:04 PM

TVoR, to add to the "list of parts already out there" add the innards/specs of the T3 to the m5xx formfactor. This is what the market has been begging--nay, SCREAMING for since '02: 320*480, BT + wi-fi in a future revision, decent battery life, 128mb or more or good ol' DRAM, good hardware buttons, solid stylus and a metal housing. That's still more PDA than 95% of the market needs and as long as it's up to par quality-wise (I mean build quality AND OS rev) it'd sell in a relative bunches. The T5 is an overpriced joke in every way imaginable other than the abandonment of the slider.

Palm Inc. and Ideo hit the nail on the head and then knocked it one of the park with the original Palm V design. That and the subsequently tweaked m5xx remain the paradigm of handheld design and will likely never be surpassed in the forseeable future. Look at any other piece of consumer electronics approaching its 6th year--short of the original Startac, I challenge you to find as timeless of a design as the Vs & m500s.

Three Treos at various price levels, the Palm V '05 as I described above, and two cheap Zires would get P1 back on their collective feet. A pity it won't happen. Wouldn't it be nice if IBM jettisons their PC division to the Chinese and picks up the remnants of P1 and relaunches the WorkPad line? Stranger things have happened...

The Voice of Reason's blueprint for Palm's recovery:

1) Ensure IMPECCABLE quality for every PDA + smartphone. C r a p p y quality is unacceptable and will keep losing Palm customers. Once bitten twice shy. A lot of us are now leery of Palm-branded PDAs after getting burned by their sh!tty construction quality over the past three years. (Pssst! Hey, Buddy - wanna buy a Hungarian m505? I've got 50 of those babies in the trunk of my car...) I'll spare you my tales of woe on how poorly built my Treo 600 was. No doubt a lot of m130 and Tungsten E "victims" would also like to meet Palm's quality control manager - assuming there is one - for a little "discussion". Mano a mano.

None of these models would be revolutionary or difficult to produce. They all use proven technology + parts that have been available for years. ***Notably absent from TVoR's Recovery Blueprint™ is PalmOS 6.***

Palm is now at a crossroads, as Netscape and WordPerfect were a few years ago. Palm still has a chance to turn things around and stop the PPC tidal wave from drowning the company in a sea of red ink. If we see any more missteps (quality control, design fcukups like the M-Systems CRAP RAM debacle, overly "optimistic" pricing, failure to attract more business sales, lackluster lineup, etc) from Palm it will probably be "Game Over". Of all the models listed above, the cheap smartphone is by far the most important in terms of helping to ensure Palm's survival. Palm's failure to release one thus far is their biggest (of many big ones) mistake. If Palm doesn't release a sub-$200 smartphone within the next few months, they are probably toast within two years. Palm seems to have started the same downward spiral seen before with Netscape, and the rate of collapse will probably escalate once Palm is officially below 50% of the PDA OS marketshare (possibly aready occurring).

WAKE UP, PALM! If Ed Colligan, David Nagel, Michael Mace, etc read PIC as regularly as people claim they do, I hope they get the message. By the end of 2005, Palm will either be well on the way to complete recovery or it will be on its deathbed. Your choice.

Funny you mentioned IBM - I just read about their rumored plans yesterday and I'm about to order one of their laptops. I hope IBM doesn't sell out - it would be a shame to be stuck with Dell as the only major alternative.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

Palm Inc. and Ideo hit the nail on the head and then knocked it one of the park with the original Palm V design. That and the subsequently tweaked m5xx remain the paradigm of handheld design and will likely never be surpassed in the forseeable future. Look at any other piece of consumer electronics approaching its 6th year--short of the original Startac, I challenge you to find as timeless of a design as the Vs & m500s.

Yes the Palm V was a brilliant piece of industrial design. But we've also seen a lot of other great designs that will stand the test of time, like:

- iPod. While I despise Apple's sleazy marketing and would never buy one of Apple's overpriced iPod's, it's still a great design.

- CLIE UX50. Not perfect, but the UX50 is the most amazing PDA ever made. It's a shame we might never see the second generation version with the OLED screen released in North America.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

I just hope someone--anyone!--at P1 is reading this and paying attention to the plans laid out by isidore, TVoR, and myself. This is FREE advice folks--you'd normally pay someone buckets of cash to get you this kind of market feedback!

Even if they keep a few carry-over models that aren't impossibly broken (Z31, Z72, a "fixed" Treo 650) in lieu of some of the new models we've outlined, that would be a damn fine course of action to follow. It's crucial that P1 not bungle any more Treos AND strike back with a flagship model that's not only stylish but reasonably powerful and bug-free. At the minimum, they need a T|E replacement, a T3/T5 replacement and a new cheapie Treo. The final two models cannot be stressed enough.

Also, pick ONE connector and standardize on it across the ENTIRE lineup, from $99 Zire to flagship Treo. Retails cannot/do not want to devote so much shelf space to every flavor of sync cradle, cable, charger and keyboard. With the P1 market consolidating overnight, it's important to put out a cohesive, uniformly strong lineup that's cross-compatible with peripherals.

Oh yeah, don't forget giving us the OPTION to enable Graffiti 1 is we choose to!

Also, as a final note, on this very site some months back, Sleith/klw proposed a rumored design for a dual-slot enabled T5 (this was before we learned of the TE2 atrocity) where one of the slots would be a "long" SDIO slot to accomodate the wi-fi card with it protruding out of the top of the handheld. That is a simply brilliant idea and since we will likely never see "shortie" wireless SDIO cards with acceptable range, that might be a good trade-off since OS 6 and P1 models with dual wireless are nowhere on the horizon. I can live with the battery life hit of a wi-fi card. I cannot live with it sticking out of the top of my handheld like some sort of malignant growth.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

I just hope someone--anyone!--at P1 is reading this and paying attention to the plans laid out by isidore, TVoR, and myself. This is FREE advice folks--you'd normally pay someone buckets of cash to get you this kind of market feedback!

Palm doesn't give a flying fcuk what consumers want. They act like it's still 1999, so people will buy anything they put out because they're the only game in town. Palm's loss of market share and lack of profitability over the past 3 years suggests Palm's thinking is seriously flawed. As much as I'd like to see Palm turn things around, I doubt this will happen. They just don't seem to have the ability to think clearly beyond the next quarter. Most PDA companies decide their lineups a year or more in advance. If this is also the case with Palm, it's likely their fate is already sealed (more NAND Flash nonsense, pathetic incremental upgrades, no Wi-Fi + Bluetooth, c r a p quality, etc).

Even if they keep a few carry-over models that aren't impossibly broken (Z31, Z72, a "fixed" Treo 650) in lieu of some of the new models we've outlined, that would be a damn fine course of action to follow. It's crucial that P1 not bungle any more Treos AND strike back with a flagship model that's not only stylish but reasonably powerful and bug-free. At the minimum, they need a T|E replacement, a T3/T5 replacement and a new cheapie Treo. The final two models cannot be stressed enough.

If Palm could just fix the horrible quality of the Tungsten E* and maybe add a 1 megepixel camera, it would make a perfect mid-range model. Very little investment required. The Tungsten "5" needs to be replaced ASAP with a Tungsten "7" having most of the features that anyone paying $400 for a PDA could reasonably expect. As mentioned before, a T7 with Palm Vx/m5xx form factor, dual SD (or SD + CompactFlash) slots, 320 x 480 rotating screen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, adequate battery life, 128 MB regular RAM, Tapwave's version of PalmOS 5, black magnesium case, mini-USB connector, high quality buttons, Treo 600 5-way navigator, decent stylus, Documents To Go and BackupMan would be a killer PDA that could renew lost faith in Palm.

*Mike Cane: NOW do you believe me what a piece of junk the Tungsten E is? Fcuked up buttons, digitizer, cheap-a$$ed case and a lot more... Why don't you just come out and admit it, Mike? The delay in you putting out your Tungsten E review is concerning, Old Boy. Are you OK? Is someone preventing you from posting the review? What's that, Flipper? Billy's caught in a cave on Dead Man's Island? I hope for your sake Ms. Hackborn doesn't have you tied up in "The Dungeon"! I doubt your decrepit old ticker could handle the excitement. ;-O

Also, pick ONE connector and standardize on it across the ENTIRE lineup, from $99 Zire to flagship Treo. Retails cannot/do not want to devote so much shelf space to every flavor of sync cradle, cable, charger and keyboard. With the P1 market consolidating overnight, it's important to put out a cohesive, uniformly strong lineup that's cross-compatible with peripherals.

Bingo. Another area where The non-Zenlike Arrogance of Palm comes shining through. Again, this isn't 1999™. (Maybe that slogan should be branded into the foreheads of every Palm exec as they sit around cashing out tens of millions of stock options.) Mini-USB would be nice to see. Palm seems oblivious to the fact that stores like Circuit City, Comp USA, Staples, Best Buy, etc despised having devalued peripheral accessories every time the "standard" changed. Now these store seem to stock almost zero peripherals. They also seem to lean towards stocking generic accessories that can be used by SEVERAL different models - both Palms and PPCs. On top of that, the cutback in displays of PDAs at the various electronics outlets should have been a wakeup call to Palm. They ignored it.

Oh yeah, don't forget giving us the OPTION to enable Graffiti 1 is we choose to!

Unless there is zero chance for appeal of the bogus Xerox case, Palm would be wise to avoid G1. Yes, G2 sucks monkey balls, but you can thank sleazy American lawyers and a bizarre patent system for that. I just submitted a patent for a process of taking a gas containing oxygen ("air") into the lungs. I call this process "Breathing™". If all goes well, by next summer I will be able to buy Microsoft, GE, Walmart, HP, GM and Dell with the petty cash of "Breathing Systematics™" (BS) Inc.

Also, as a final note, on this very site some months back, Sleith/klw proposed a rumored design for a dual-slot enabled T5 (this was before we learned of the TE2 atrocity) where one of the slots would be a "long" SDIO slot to accomodate the wi-fi card with it protruding out of the top of the handheld. That is a simply brilliant idea and since we will likely never see "shortie" wireless SDIO cards with acceptable range, that might be a good trade-off since OS 6 and P1 models with dual wireless are nowhere on the horizon. I can live with the battery life hit of a wi-fi card. I cannot live with it sticking out of the top of my handheld like some sort of malignant growth.

There's no reason we should be fcuking around with Wi-Fi cards in 2005. Integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth should be standard on all but the cheapest of PDAs. The UX50, European TH55, and dozens of PPCs have had this for a while. Is Palm so incompetent that it's unable to have even a single dual Wi-Fi/Bluetooth PDA in their lineup? They aren't even building the PDAs themselves! All Palm has to do is SPECIFY dual wireless and their contractor (HTC, Solectron, etc.) will do the rest! Totally inexcusable. This is the type of cheap-a$$ed nickel and diming thinking that has driven hundreds of thousands of users away from Palm and into the clutches of "Wild" Billy G.

Maybe if we all emailed this thread to all of the Palm (first name.last name @ palmone or palmsource .com) execs they would do something. Not likely, but worth a shot.

RE: Who cares? Where the he11 are the Cobalt PDAs???????

I also think Palm tries to do too much. All we need is a functional device with WiFi. The best selling Palm has been Zire and TE and they still selling strong compares to T5 and other newer devices. Palm marketing knows it too, this is why they do TV ad on TE only now a day. Why not just make a TE like device + Wifi and sell it under $229.99 listed price. This won't waste years of devlopment time and it will sell good.

Yeah... and I want Wifi in it, not Wifi SD. I want to use SD slot for something else.

It's too late for Palm

"Death can come swiftly to a market leader. By the time you have lost the positive-feedback cycle it's often too late to change what you've been doing, and all of the elements of a negative spiral come into play." - Bill Gates, "The Road Ahead", Chapter 3

RE: It's too late for Palm

RE: It's too late for Palm

I agree. Sony ditched the U. S. market, and they were the only P1 licencee that I would call 'innovative' (Look at the discontinued Clie NX and UX series). Would it bite PalmOne if they just released atleast SOMETHING OS6 with Wi-Fi for a decent price? As for that T |E2 excuse, they might aswell try to sell another c r a p p y device with that tiny screen on the Treo 600 to sink them even farther than they already are. For many of us, I doubt we will be here at this same month next year if P1 doesn't please the participants of this b!tch fest with a decent handheld. Jumping over to PPC if they keep up this bool-shee-it.

Benhamou

I blame Eric Benhamou for the demise of Palm. Benhamou is the chairman of the board of directors of palmOne and was, up until recently, chairman of PalmSource. This is the guy that chose incompetents like Yankowski, Nagel, and Gassee - among others. Poor leadership and nepotism are among his sins. When the final chapter of Palm is written, Benhamou should bear the ultimate responsibility for its failure.

RE: Benhamou

I agree with you. But he is gone, and that's a good thing. Just get rid of all the incompetent people, Benhamou and Nagel, brought onboard and hopefully the problem might be solved.

I mean some om the Palmsource management talk as if they have the same power as Microsoft . They talk about Cobolt as if neither Microsoft nor Symbian can challenge it - it's ridicules. It just shows how these people lack business experience completely.

Welcome to Nepotism 101, students: Case #1 - Palm, Inc.

Yes, Wanker, Nagel and Pépé have each parasitized millions off Palm's soon-to-be carcass. Nagel's probably up to over $20 million in the past couple years and no-one seems to notice. Even $5 million sure would have gone a long way towards putting adequate RAM into the PDAs and speeding PalmOS development...

RE: Benhamou

I agree with you VoR. If you look at the executive board at PalmSource, most of them have similar experiences from the same company (Apple, AT&T) and somehow related to one another. Business rule no. 1: NEVER employ friends/family as part of your company.

VoR, I recommend you to go to one of their Dev Cons that they have and meet these people in person. Their real life persona meets what you have expected of them. Unimpressed!

RE: Benhamou

Benhamou was also a major part of the reason Jeff Hawkins and Donna ran from the company he founded to start handspring, and then look where that got them. He seems to have been a force that lead to a lot of bad choices and wasted time/opportunities.

LOL

Ok I can see this if you are in the business. But most of you are consumers of a product! Do you all take this much interest in the CFO of a supermarket stepping down? Seems like food would be more important to you and your family than a PDA? How about volunteering down at the local mission, that may give you something of value to do with your time. LMAO

RE: LOL

If these enthusiasts have been so thoroughly disgusted and offended with the feature set and price of the recent offerings from Palm, why are they still here complaining about it? Shouldn't they have switched to a competitor by now?

The continued presence of Gekko and company means that THEY STILL BUY AND LOVE PALM HANDHELDS NO MATTER WHAT.

The emperor (PalmSource) has no clothes

Palmsource stock has dropped from $25 to under $15 in two months. Unless Sony suddenly announced a new Super CLIE and a new Sony Ericsson both running on PalmOS 6, this stock will keep tumbling until Palm is forced to step in and "buy" back PalmSource. The only winners here were PalmSource's Board of directors, Pépé Gassee and the short traders.

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